The Canadian author of this novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2011 for his second novel “The Sisters Brothers” (which also won two Canadian literary prizes and some other nominations) - an offbeat, eccentric-character-populated Western-based novel which to me read more like a Coen brothers film script. Behind Bob Comet's straight-man facade is the story of an unhappy child's runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian's vocation, and of the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Bob's experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsize players to welcome onto the stage of his life.

About another librarian, "She spoke of a world without children in the same way others spoke of a world without hunger or disease." Weird and hilariously deadpan in just the way you’d expect from the author of The Sisters Brothers and French Exit, this was the pop of fun my summer needed. Okay, but if she starts freaking out, can you try to get her through the doors?” The cashier made a corralling gesture, arms out. “Once she’s in the parking lot she’s out of my domain.” I did enjoy my time with this book - there’s a warmth to the writing and it has an offbeat humor- and it does make me want to seek out the rest of deWitt’s work. Memorable characters and a strain of burlesque comedy swirl through this story spanning the life of a retired librarian ... deWitt takes us on a waltzer of a ride, twisting through Bob's life

When and how Bob meets Connie (and her freaky Priest-hating father) and Ethan - really the only two people with who he ever forms a close bond – and how the dynamics of that off-the-wall set of relationships develop;

That international success set expectations high, but deWitt, who seems as unflappable as his deadpan assassins, has shown no signs of feeling boxed in. His next novel, “Undermajordomo Minor,” was a gothic adventure, and then, in another course change, came a brittle comedy of manners called “French Exit.”

June scowled at Ida. “You know, Bob,” she said, “I support your project in every way. But I’m uneasy at the thought of one so young as yourself being alone in the world. Because the world sometimes is a complicated place.” Overall, I am actually a bit sad about this book because I felt that it has a bit of magic in it. It really did make me stop and think. However, it was just too slow paced and had too many unnecessary characters. Is it a spoiler if there’s no plot to be spoiled? Anyway, I won’t reveal the character’s identity but deWitt could’ve ended the story there because nothing that follows adds to what we already know of Bob’s life and the entire final third is completely irrelevant. Bob Comet is our 71-year-old protagonist. Since retiring from the public library where he has spent his entire professional career, he’s enjoyed a life of almost uninterrupted solitude in the house his mother left to him decades earlier. He is devoted to his books. The story begins in the narrative present between 2005 and 2006.

I’ll admit another disappointment - not enough book talk. For a novel about a book lover, someone who devoted their life to books and was a voracious reader, there aren’t any actual titles mentioned (besides Crime and Punishment, twice). We’re just told he reads a lot. So don’t go expecting a book about books. This is about a solitary man who doesn't realize his life is impactful. There is such a thing as charisma, which is the ability to inveigle the devotion of others to benefit your personal cause; the inverse of charisma is horribleness, which is the phenomenon of fouling the mood of a room by simply being. Bob was neither one of these, and neither was he set at a midpoint between the extremes. He was to the side, out of the race completely."

From the best-selling author of Atonement and Saturday comes the epic and intimate story of one man's life across generations and historical upheavals. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic, Roland Baines sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it.

Because although we are told (a number of times) that is how Bob views the world we are not really shown it; as we instead see Bob in a series of rather dramatic incidents (the elderly lady rescue and sudden discovery, the three-way relationship and rapid marriage, betrayal by and then death of his best friend, the cross-country runaway and then in the final section a hospital trip and closing revelations) which are more novelistic in themselves. By contrast we get very little information on the books that Bob reads – which means that for us our true impression is that Bob lives rather then reads. Behind Bob Comet’s straight-man façade is the story of an unhappy child’s runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian’s vocation, and of the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Bob’s experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsize players to welcome onto the stage of his life.The next day Bob returned to the beach to practice his press rolls. The first performance was scheduled to take place thirty-six hours hence; with this in mind, Bob endeavored to arrive at a place where he could achieve the percussive effect without thinking of it. An hour and a half passed, and he paused, looking out to sea and having looking-out-to-sea thoughts. He imagined he heard his name on the wind and turned to find Ida leaning out the window of the tilted tower; her face was green as spinach puree, and she was waving at him that he should come up. Bob held the drum above his head, and she nodded that he should bring it with him.